


Fleeing the Sinking Ship

by Severina



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Community: tamingthemuse, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-03
Updated: 2013-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-28 00:30:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/668223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was speculation, he remembers, of some designer drug gone viral.  It had hit all the major cities, Anderson Cooper had said.  It seemed to be spreading, Anderson Cooper had said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fleeing the Sinking Ship

**Author's Note:**

> Pre-series. Written for LJ's tamingthemuse community, for the prompt 'mouse'
> 
> * * *

Daryl wakes up on the sofa. 

The early morning sunlight stabs sharply into his eyes, lays in bars against the old quilt that's half-covering his body. For a moment he can't remember why he's slumped on the lumpy sofa, his back aching, his mouth dry and pasty, and his head throbbing. Then it comes back to him: the old honky-tonk on the edge of town, the juke too loud and the beer too weak. The frantic, frenetic voices of the people around the bar. The desperation that permeated that air: just drink, just toke, just find a willing body. Forget.

He squints against the sunlight, scrubs a hand over his chin and struggles to a sitting position. 

That's when he sees the mouse.

It's an old farmhouse. There are mice. But not like this brazen motherfucker, just sitting calmly on the arm of the sofa, nose twitching. Looking at him like it belongs there.

His arm reaches out, hand fumbling against a bottle of beer on the end table. His fist closes around it, and he hears the telltale swish of leftover liquid in the bottom of the bottle. He has a brief moment of regret at the waste of good Bud before he lets it fly.

His aim is off – he blames the hangover – but the mouse still squeaks and vanishes with a swish of tail, scurrying down the arm of the sofa and out of sight.

"Little shit," he mumbles, his voice hoarse and raw to his ears. Nothing that a little hair of the dog won't cure. He finds another half-full bottle amidst the sprawl of magazines and take-out containers littering the coffee table, makes a face when the sun-warmed beer hits his throat. Swallows it down regardless. 

He gropes for the remote, glances toward the little television in the corner of the room before remembering that the signal went out three days ago. Last thing he saw before the reception dropped was Anderson Cooper running down some garishly-lit street in New York City, the jittering camera-work catching only glimpses of his pale shocked face and the people closing in all around him, staggering and lurching into and out of the frame. There was speculation, he remembers, of some designer drug gone viral. It had hit all the major cities, Anderson Cooper had said. It seemed to be spreading, Anderson Cooper had said. 

"Whatever it is, it ain't never gonna make it this far," Merle had said. 

Daryl trusted his big brother a lot more than Anderson fucking Cooper, with his perfect hair and perfect teeth. But he still spent the better part of the next three days half in the can, trying to get the images of those ashen faces with their blank staring eyes out of his mind. Trying to forget that although the footage was grainy, it almost looked like some of them were missing chunks of flesh – sometimes significant chunks, sometimes chest cavities or throats or entire limbs – and yet were still walking. Still reaching out and trying to infect someone new.

And though he was anywhere from tipsy to shitfaced most of the time, it also didn't escape his notice that Merle had made the rounds of all his dealers, laying in a supply that would last him the next six months if he didn't go on a bender.

Daryl grits his teeth when the headache flares anew, lets the remote drop from nerveless fingers. It hits the edge of the table and slides across the dirty hardwood floor, landing next to a scattered pile of last week's newspapers. 

A mouse darts from beneath the papers and makes a beeline for the kitchen. 

Daryl blinks, sits up a little straighter. His head is pounding now, a wild thump-pulse that makes it hard to think. 

Another mouse, skittering along the baseboard. Two more hesitate in the open space of the room before also racing toward the kitchen. Another, peeking a nose out from behind ma's old china cabinet. 

"The hell?" he murmurs.

His legs feel weak when he stands, but he doesn't think it's the alcohol.

The screen door creaks loudly when he opens it, the morning breeze refreshingly cool on skin that has gone suddenly clammy. He steps out onto the wraparound porch, warped boards shifting under his weight as he walks toward the railing. He feels his mouth go slack as his hand grips the rail tight enough to hurt.

Mice are flooding out of the field, in twos and threes and tens, crawling over each other in their haste to get away. 

And beyond them – stumbling through the dry dusty ground that once grew strong, healthy barley and corn – are the people. He thinks he recognizes Mrs. Hartley, the old biddy from down the road, the one that was always sticking her nose into their business, got the sheriff down to search the property once, looking for Merle's grow op. Except this is a Mrs. Hartley wearing only a long floral nightdress, stained and torn and dirty. 

He recognizes Joe, Nick Traynor's boy. The kid that works in the feed store, Mickey something or other. Sally Kilbride, who once gave him a blowjob in the front seat of his truck outside the old Tastee Freeze in the middle of the goddamn day, long blonde hair shining, slipping through his fingers like silk as her head moved up and down, up and down.

She's missing most of her cheek now, and her golden hair is slick with blood and gore.

Daryl staggers back against the house, his eyes flicking from one person to the next. At the end of the driveway and back at the tree line, there are still more that are too far away to identify. More and more and more.

It is only in seeing them with his own eyes, on his property, that his brain is able to accept what his heart knew ever since he saw Anderson Cooper running frenziedly down that neon-lit street.

They're not sick people. They're dead people. 

And Merle was wrong. 

They're here.


End file.
